Ethan Hawke: What I've Learned About Life…and Marriage

On the Uma years: "I had no business taking vows"

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For the Gen-X woman, Ethan Hawke will always be the romantic, dirty-footed hero of such films as Reality Bites, Great Expectations, and Before Sunrise. That last movie was about two strangers meeting on a train and falling in love. In real life, Hawke seemed just as impulsive. He married young, at 27, to Uma Thurman. He also divorced young, just six years later, amid infidelity rumors. Lucky for us, he channeled his frustrations into Before Sunset, a sequel he co-wrote about those same two strangers meeting again nine years later. (Sample bit of possibly self-referential dialogue on why relationships sometimes stink: "I'm running a small nursery with someone I used to date.") In 2008, Hawke married Ryan Shawhughes, his children's former nanny, and because life comes full circle, the prototypical slacker now has a teen-ager of his own. (For insights on that, see Before Midnight—this year's installment.) Thankfully, he's still a man of charming contradictions. This month, Hawke both stars opposite Selena Gomez in the car-chase flick Getaway and preps for a Broadway run of Macbeth. Out, out damned spotlight.

Ethan Hawke: Who doesn't? In high school, I was just a guy who could never find his pen. A year later I did Dead Poets Society, and suddenly I was very interesting to girls. Sadly, I spent the bulk of 18 to 25—when I should have been partying my face off and gathering ye rosebuds while ye may—hopelessly insecure.

ELLE: Which felt better: having your first novel published or losing your virginity?

EH: [Laughs] That's well said. I remember the reviews for both, and they weren't all good. I was very, very lucky. I lost my virginity to someone I cared for very much and who cared very much for me. The thing that's so important for young people to know is that, if you use protection, sex is one of the few vices that you can really enjoy as a young person.

ELLE: You've played some incredibly romantic characters. Did women expect you to be that guy?

EH: I can't tell you how many times in the '90s I'd meet somebody, we'd be having a nice time, and they'd sigh and go, "This is exactly like Before Sunrise." And I'd have to get up and leave.

ELLE:Before Midnight is about fighting for romance in your forties. Julie Delpy's character, Celine, criticizes your character, saying, "You have sex the exact same way every time." Did you write that line?

EH: What kind of idiot would I be to answer that question?

ELLE: I read it was autobiographical.

EH: [Laughs] The sincere answer to that question is, I'm the most dynamic lover this world has ever seen since Giacomo Casanova.

ELLE:Before Sunset is rare in that we root for the married guy to cheat on his wife.

EH: I was secretly extremely proud of that. [Laughs] It's one of my great achievements. We live in an absolutely Victorian age. Everybody wants to believe you fall in love and monogamy is no longer an issue. The bottom line is our species is not monogamous. Go talk to a doctor.

ELLE:Before Midnight seems to argue that an affair is okay provided it's only physical. And you come home. True?

EH: Part of what we love about people are their secrets—their inner life that you can't touch. Yet once we're in that close relationship, we want to own them in total. [Laughs] Like Jesse, I refuse to answer. It's undignified to. But I'll say this: If Bill Clinton had had a brain, he would've pleaded the Fifth. It's better than lying. Lying is the problem.

ELLE: You were only 27 when you first got married. Did you feel ready?

EH: Success when you're young is really overwhelming. The world felt out of control. And I wanted to stop it from spinning so fast. I thought marriage would decrease my variables or something. I was absolutely wrong. [Pause] There was this discovery that the male brain isn't done until 28. I definitely think my frontal lobe was not finished. I had no business taking vows that would last more than two weeks. My personal opinion? The guy who's got it right is Derek Jeter. He lives his life like, "Hey man, I play shortstop for the New York Yankees. And I'm not going to get married until I'm no longer a shortstop for the New York Yankees." Which is incredibly smart.

ELLE: Did you share any of this advice with your latest costar, Selena Gomez?

EH: Yeah, but young people always think their problems are so unique. I know I felt that way. Around the time of Reality Bites, I met Debbie Reynolds at a dinner party. And she offered me all of this fantastic advice about, you know, her divorce from Eddie Fisher, and Liz Taylor, and how to separate acting from public life. I remember thinking, What does this lady know right now? The funny thing is, everything she said to me that night was true. If I could have heard her, I would have avoided so many mistakes.

ELLE: You lived at the Chelsea Hotel for a while. Were there some wild nights?

EH: I met Arthur Miller in the hallway. He was with this girl. It was this old guy standing at the elevator with this incredibly beautiful young woman that I was kind of making googly eyes with. Then I realized she was his girlfriend. I thought, Man, shit. Life is interesting.

ELLE: Other than from Debbie Reynolds, ever receive any particularly valuable advice about women?

EH: My grandfather told me the greatest thing about aging is that, by the time you're 90, you're intimidated by no one and attracted to everyone. When you're 30, you think a 50-year-old woman is—nah. But when you're 70, a 50-year-old woman is smoking! When you're 90, a 60-year-old woman is hot.

Web exclusive: A few choice outtakes from Mickey's interview with Hawke that didn't make it onto the page:

ELLE: After all of these years, you're still wearing a goatee. Are you afraid to shave it off?

EH: The funny thing is, it's the way my beard grows. That's what I look like unshaven. But it's obvious—we all have certain security blankets. I feel good like that. It's not like I wouldn't go out of my house without a goatee. Johnny Cash only wore black. I hope it's not like that.

ELLE: What's the most grand, romantic gesture you've made?

EH: I personally don't think grand gestures are actually romantic. The most romantic moments of my life have been so subtle and small. A snowstorm breakfast, a walk, an accidental meeting. Whenever you start planning these grand things—I'm gonna pick the great flower from the top of Mt. Everest—you're already losing. You're trying too hard.

ELLE: You own a nude photograph of Marilyn Monroe. Was she a touchstone for you?

EH: It's a cool nude of Marilyn that one of the assistants took. I'm not really into Marilyn Monroe. I'm not into any of those cult-of-personality figures. That deity worship of good looking people has gotten far more play than it needs.

ELLE: You own a private island in Nova Scotia. I was imagining you spiriting women away there.

EH: It sounds more glamorous than it is. It's about four-feet off the shore and you can drive to it.

ELLE: When you got married the second time, was there something you vowed to do differently?

EH: Through the failure of my first marriage I learned a lot about myself. Until you know yourself, you don't know how to share your life with another person. And this may sound too self help-y, but when I was a young man, I had all these ideas about who I wanted to be. But they weren't totally rooted in the truth.

ELLE: What were those ideas? You wanted to be a movie star?

EH: I don't know. The trouble with ideas is they change from day to day. One day you want to be a regular guy, then the next day you want to be Warren Beatty.

ELLE: You're performing in Macbeth this fall. Is there a Shakespeare line about women that rings true to you?

EH: Well, the first one that jumps out is, "Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned." That's famous for a reason. That is reason alone to mind your p's and q's.